NEWS AND BLOG

We are in the middle of a UI revolution, with user expectations increasing thanks to mobile apps and the rapidly improving user experience found on the web. As a result a whole new look on UI is taking over our industry, with technologies such as SAP UI5, SAP Fiori and Ember JS the latest step forward. Hence, it doesn’t come as a surprise that in providing application developers with a way of creating fast and easy user interface application, SAP UI5 has very quickly become one of SAP's hot topics and in-turn the media’s sweetheart.

Here in my blog, and a few more to come, I will dive a little further into these technologies.

What is SAP UI5?

SAP UI5 is the latest in the SAPs UI ventures, it brings more flexibility to the UI approach. Traditionally WebDynpro for Java and ABAP developers built UIs with a given set of SAP standard APIs while trying to come up with workarounds within the framework to squeeze additional usability requirements in. With the introduction of UI5 we can now freely build UIs with much more flexibility and (if I may say so) enthusiasm which brings a new freshness to the otherwise controlled development of UIs within the SAP technology landscape.

What does this mean for UI Developers?

One doesn’t have to know SAP to code using SAP UI5! It’s true, as UI5 has the capability to consume REST/OData services – so we can easily build services using SAP Netweaver Gateway to expose SAP data in OData format. This will allow the UI development team to focus their skills on building amazing UIs without worrying about what goes on in the backend. This has truly opened up a whole new avenue for non-SAP developers to get a bit closer to the SAP world without having to know SAP.

Is everyone ready to embrace this explosion of technologies in a bid to be a part of the SAP UI5 hype?

I guess the answer to that is still yet to be seen, however at AgilityWorks we have taken UI revolution very seriously and are constantly researching and implementing new UI solutions across our projects. SAP UI5 has been a keen interest for us from its introduction in the market, and it will continue to be so as long as SAP continues investing in it (a theme editor would be a boon!).

I would now like to bring you into the heart of AgilityWorks UI research where our group of highly skilled UI developers have already been working on Innovative UI solutions with the help of one of the more exciting open source UI technologies, a certain one worth mentioning is Ember JS.

Agilityworks has built its own framework for Ember JS, allowing us to bring exciting UIs online in the most efficient and effective way possible. This amazing technology coupled with AgilityWorks’ internal framework has already been used to provide few of our customers with some mind blowing desktop, mobile and tablet UIs.

The next blog in this series on the future of UI technology will delve further into Ember JS.

Jennifer is AgilityWorks' resident Growth Hacker, working tirelessly with each business unit to bring you the latest and greatest technology and software innovations on the market. In her free time Jennifer is a keen cyclist, although she seems to spend more time falling off the bike than riding it.